


Strain

by kittydesade



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 01:22:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Filling in the journey between Dreiberg's basement and Manhattan's government complex, Rorschach has some thoughts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cousin Shelley (CousinShelley)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CousinShelley/gifts).



_Greasy pizza smell over the tunnel exit. Homeless man rifling through dumpster for scraps. He looks at me and walks the other way._

Rorschach came out of the tunnel with his shoulders tight and his hands still in his pockets, clenched into fists. His mind emptier than usual, hollowed out by the absence at his side where his friend should be. He hadn't expected that.

 _Maybe he's right. Should leave it alone._ The thought flickered through his head and was gone. It had only appeared in the first place because he knew Dan and Dan knew him, going back years now. Rorschach didn't have many who stayed, not many who paid attention to his ramblings and his temper. And he did have a temper. He'd admit that freely with no bias or guilt whatsoever.

The rain had stopped for a little while. It would start again soon; that heaviness was in the air, touched by chemical smell and concrete and the steel of the city corridors of skyscrapers upon skyscrapers. There was more yet to do, but for a moment he walked past the hookers and the all-night diners with their desperate and drained customers and thought of nothing at all. Letting the city fill him again.

This city sustained him. It sustained the Comedian, too. Kept them busy with purpose and a job to do, and without a job to do people became listless and lazy, or worse, filling their time with other things. Sex. Drugs. Murders in back alleys, terrorizing and beating others because they could. Rorschach knew the value of terror and strength. He used it often, it was as comfortable to him as his gloves or his coat or his enigmatical face, but that didn't mean he mistook it for useful of its own sake. Left alone, violence was indulgence, as debauched as whoring from brothel to brothel till you died of the half dozen diseases you'd accumulated.

In a perfect world, there was no place for men like him, or the Comedian. But this perfect world was a fiction invented to give people something to hope for. Humanity was too flawed to sustain it for more than a microsecond.

He tried. He did his best. So had the Comedian, till someone threw him off a building. _Who's next? Silk Spectre? Manhattan?_

Even Rorschach found it difficult to believe that anyone could kill the god out of the machine, but if someone had found out who the Comedian was and managed to murder him, maybe they had studied the rest of them. Might as well warn the others, just in case.

Dreiberg hadn't cared, though. He hadn't believed him.

 _Doesn't matter. Dreiberg can take care of himself._ He believed he believed that, sort of, but his stride wasn't as steady as it used to be. He heard Dreiberg's voice calling after him, what happened. Just like old times, what happened.

 _  
**You quit.**   
_

Resentment and bile and leather gloves creaked in old pockets as his fists clenched tighter. It was a betrayal. Understandable, but betrayal, Dreiberg had left him to fight on his own so he could pretend he was normal, like the rest of them. He wasn't normal any more than Rorschach, any more than Silk Spectre, or the Comedian, or Ozymandius. You didn't do this and stay normal. You didn't do this because you wanted to be normal, you did it because there was no other way.

 _Did Dreiberg find another way?_ No, he hadn't. Shifting patterns of heat and black colored Rorschach's face in a sneer. Or what passed for a sneer. _He fooled himself into thinking he could stop. We don't stop._ We just get old, tired, fat and lazy, lustful and stinking in some synthetic life where the sun never stopped shining. So you could pretend you had done a good days' work and had earned your rest.

Somewhere underneath the mask, Walter stirred at the idea of rest and popped aching shoulders, broken knees. Rest was good.

Sleep was good. When Rorschach was done spreading the word among those who were left he would sleep for a while, then begin his investigation. Start off with who could have done it. Not many who could beat the Comedian in hand to hand combat, and the only weapons it looked like anyone had used were the ones in the room itself. Not even the Comedian's hideout stash had been disturbed. It had been brutal, and it had finished quick. _Not many who can fight like that. Short list. Most of them dead._

Almost at the military complex now. Rorschach thought over the list, most of them former allies or enemies. And most of them, yes, were dead. Or in no condition to fight like that.

 _Someone was. If not us, someone new._ And that was a thought he didn't like at all, not if it was only going to be him. Maybe the Doc, maybe Silk Spectre, but Ozymandius was too busy sitting in his tall tower away from human life as it was, painting everything purple and calling it good. Dreiberg was useless. Worse than useless.

Walter clenched his fists again and wished he'd punched his old friend when he had the chance. It hurt, to be abandoned like that. Hiding behind a mask, he wasn't hiding. This was who he was. Walter died years ago.

The guards around the complex were the same. Same number, even some of the same faces. Rorschach left most them alone more out of a need to get to Doctor Manhatten without sidetracks and delays than anything else, took the high road. Took note of the fact that they hadn't increased the guard either around the perimeter or within the complex itself. Whatever this was, the government hadn't caught wind of it. _Unless the government's behind it. First the Keene act, now this? Kill off the last of us._ He wouldn't put it past them. Being on government payroll wouldn't have spared the Comedian if they decided they wanted him dead. It wouldn't spare Doc Manhattan or Silk Spectre.

Rorschach started to creep his way across the roofs, through the shadows. If the government was behind it, he'd take the button pushers and the desk riders and the politicians responsible down, too. No compromise, no surrender. Not for anyone.

Not even Dreiberg.


End file.
